The coastal community college is too far over the top for psychological counseling to restore its sanity.

As it stands, the campus afflictions are beyond the scope of familiar remedies.

If it's to return to normalcy, MiraCosta must adopt radical means to flush out the demons occupying, and torturing, its psyche.

In short, MiraCosta needs an . . . exorcist.

What not long ago was North County's model of academic collegiality has descended into a head-spinning projectile-vomiting horror show.

Where's Father Damien when you need him?

OK, I'm kidding. Sort of.

Advertisement Call it gallows humor, a protective reflex when faced with Silly String hate crimes, the specter of Ku Klux Klansmen hunting for green-braceleted dissidents on campus, and loaded guns under long coats in Oceanside. The Tuesday meeting of the MiraCosta board was, as local government goes, a veritable Grand Guignol, a venom-letting featuring death threats to college President Victoria Muñoz Richart, lesser threats to a trustee, and the hateful letters “KKK” written on the home of Charles Adams, the black president of the board.

Ugly, scary stuff.

No joke, Richart and the board's four-member majority have been, figuratively speaking, beaten up over their politically and financially disastrous Palmgate investigation. In the wake of lunatic threats, however, Richart and Adams are framing themselves as victims, not of demented crimes but of a campus culture of “hate.”

Richart, who has espoused chaos as a “creative force,” fought back tears Tuesday as she accused the faculty and other critics of conducting a campaign of “terrorism at its worst.”

As for Adams, he translated his rightful anger at an unidentified racist vandal(s) into a livid indictment of anyone wearing a green rubber wristband, a symbol of anti-Richart solidarity inscribed with the words, “Restore Our MiraCosta.”

Adams' tongue-lashing, unlike anything I've heard from an elected official, is worth quoting at length:

“My world was shattered Friday morning when my wife walked in the door and said someone has put 'KKK' on the front of my house. . . . This is considered a hate crime. (Investigators) asked me who did I think. I immediately named you, you (he pointed at Classified Senate President Abdy Afzali and Academic Senate President Jonathan Cole).

“Because I named the Academic Senate with their hate-filled propaganda, their green bracelets that they're wearing here, the letter that was sent to the president and to my fellow board member Carolyn Batiste, and I said to them, 'anybody did this, that's who did it.'

“It's ironic that my neighborhood hangs together. I've got 30 people walking around my block. Some of these people are retired Marines. They're wearing long coats. Understand something. Those long coats aren't to keep them warm. . . . You woke up a blood-sucking angry dog. . . .

“Guess what? The Ku Klux Klan called my house – would you believe that? – to tell me, 'We did not touch your house,' that it was someone else. Now I don't know if you know the Ku Klux Klan, but those who are from the East, we know them. They do not appreciate you messing in their name or putting their letters on there. They're going to be looking for you, yes, sir, they're going to be looking at you. I told them who I think. That's my prerogative. You make innuendos, I'm going to make mine. I told them about green armbands. You want to know who they are, walk on campus, they've got green armbands. Those are the ones promoting hate.

“I'm tired. You woke up a sleeping dog. . . . I unlocked my gun cabinet and that's what I'm carrying. Not now. But if you come to my neighborhood, that's what you're going to walk into. I'm not threatening anybody. African-Americans do not threaten; we prophesy. Come into my neighborhood with your crap and they're going to to carry you out. Trust me. . . . This is the animal you have unleashed. Repercussions are about to come down. Had you not brought this hate to this campus and this community, you wouldn't be having the problem you're going to be having.”

MiraCosta, the North County college that once had it all, has turned, literally it seems, into armed camps.

Unfortunately, air-clearing elections aren't scheduled until 2008.

In an ideal world, which MiraCosta's clearly is not, moral bankruptcy would be declared today. President Richart, a radioactive lightning rod, would quit as an altruistic gesture. The board would resign en masse, all seven of them. All the active faculty reps would resign to focus on teaching. A clean sweep. An interim board would serve until the next election.

Of course, egos being what they are, that won't happen. Adams, for one, doesn't sound like he's about to give in to his tormentors. As for Richart, she has self-serving leverage. Before skipping out on the chaos she's helped create, Richart could demand a 24-carat golden parachute or, if she's fired without a plush severance, she could sue for damages to her standing as a college administrator.

Meanwhile, the faculty, supported by a cadre of former faculty and trustees, will keep up the political pressure to oust Richart and, over time, change the board's balance of power.

Without Father Damien giving it the old college try, it's going to be one long, hot, tense summer at MiraCosta.